Occurrence and Resistance to Antibiotics of Campylobacter spp. in Retail Raw Sheep and Goat Meat in Shahr-e Kord, Iran

This study was conducted to determine the prevalence and antimicrobial resistance of Campylobacter spp. isolated from retail raw sheep and goat meats in Iran. From luly 2009 to March 2010, a total of 224 raw meat samples from sheep (n = 114) and goat (n = 110) were purchased from randomly selected retail outlets in Shahr-e Kord, Iran and were evaluated for the presence of Campylobacter. Using cultural method, 22 of 224 meat samples (9.8%) were contaminated with Campylobacter. The prevalence of Campylobacter spp. in sheep and goat meat samples were 13.2% and 6.4%, respectively. The most prevalence Campylobacter species isolated from meat samples was Campylobacter jejuni (81.8%); the remaining isolates were Campylobacter coli (18.2%). The PCR assay could identify 4 Campylobacter-contaminated samples that were negative using the cultural method. Susceptibilities of 22 Campylobacter isolates were determined for ten antimicrobial drugs using the disk diffusion assay. Resistance to tetracycline was the most common finding (63.6%), followed by resistance to ciprofloxacin (45.5%), enrofloxacin (31.8%), nalidixic acid (31.8%) and ampicillin (13.6%). All of the isolates were susceptible to amoxicillin, eiythromycin, gentamicin and chloramphenicol. More epidemiological studies are needed in order to determine the possible role of sheep and goat as a source and/or reservoir of Campylobacter spp.